


Junkho

by Sheffield



Series: Another Life [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:30:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield





	Junkho

Her name was Junkho. He had known a relative of hers - an uncle, or some more obscure connection, he was never sure - a long time ago, in another country. He remembered her, at ten, vaguely, as a noisy brat. Remembered, vaguely, a different quality to the noise one day, and, almost casually, stopping the noise by breaking the arm of some guy who was ... something. He wasn't sure what, exactly. Hassling her somehow. It had been no big deal, not to him. But it had been some kind of big deal to her, it seemed.

So, anyway, he used that market because it was close and fairly clean and sometimes, if it was her shift, she would recognise him and smile. And there would be stuff in his basket - steak. The good coffee. Some kind of premium salad oil. Stuff he didn't have to pay for, that he would never have bought alone.

It made a difference. His disability pension was tiny. He needed to get a job or something soon or he'd starve.

Rice. Lentils. You could go a long way on curried rice with lentils or curried lentils with rice. Sometimes there were perfectly good vegetables in the dumpster. Shameful if you thought about it, so you didn't. Think about it. Foraging. Living off the land, on enemy territory. He had been expensively trained in survival, after all.

So it was Junkho's day and there was steak in his basket, steak and fresh spinach and new potatoes and all was right with his world. Till he heard the noise.

The noise she made. Like the time before, the guy. Only this time he was too far away, too late. She was on the ground, and the guy was standing over her, with a gun.

Guy? Kid. And there was another of them, a kid even younger, standing at the till with a Saturday night special in his hands like the first. Jim kind of melted out of sight, down the row of canned goods, till he was in a good position with a clear line of fire. And then he took out the kid by the till with an overarm throw of a can of tunafish over the putative rapist's shoulder and then disarmed the rapist with a karate kick to the groin, also from behind, that left the boy screaming on the floor.

Junkho was panting for breath and had a cut over one eye and a bruise on her jaw but she was - relatively - unharmed. Jim dragged screaming boy over to tunafish boy by the collar of his fancy gang-colour jacket and dumped him unceremoniously on top of his buddy, thus disabling tunafish boy under the weight while he thumb-tied screaming boy with the lace from his own ratty sneaker. By which time Junkho was on her feet and jabbering something in foreign to the old guy behind the counter. Jim had never been clear who the old guy was - relative or employer - but the two of them were doing a lot of that bowing crap and Junkho's face was lit with that adoring look her recalled from when she was ten.

"Mr Jim, this is my grandfather, sir. He would like to thank you. These are very bad boys. They say we pay them. $100, every week. For 'protection'"

And there it was, complete. His future career laid out before him like a map. He smiled and looked over the opposition.

"From now on," he said, smiling, "it will only cost you $50. And in return you will actually get protection. From me."

 

The gang kids were out on bail in forty seven minutes, and an hour after that they knew where Jim's apartment was and they were on the fire escape and in the hall, a standard flanking deployment. Jim had, however, been expensively trained in this kind of work. He contemplated the twelve gang boys, all now covered in purple paint and feathers, sitting in a surly group on the floor of his living room, hands on heads. The bullet holes in the wall would take hours to plaster over. Unless he decided to leave them be, make a feature of them. He could probably pass them off as modern sculpture...

... he calmly put a bullet into the thigh of the one who had made the move. Good. He was beginning to think he would have to wait all day, and that steak wasn't going to cook itself.

"I believe I told you to stay where you were?"

"Listen, man, the Cascade Crew don't take orders from no soldierboy."

"This all of you?"

"You'll never know. Homies'll fall on you like-"

"Yeah yeah. You in charge? Or have I just wasted a bullet."

"I'm the man."

Jim smiled broadly.

"Well as of now, lieutenant, *I'm* the Man."

 

Jim held the gun just under the boy's ear.

"Your name Derby?"

"Who wants to know?"

"The man with the gun? Try again, boy."

"Yeah, I'm Derby."

"Good."

Jim released his hold and the youth - a scrawny eighteen if he was a day - turned like a cornered rat with a knife in his hand that seemed to have come from nowhere.

Jim calmly took it away from him and, slowly, deliberately, broke the little finger of his right hand.

"That's one."

"Ow! You crazy, man. One what? I ain't done nothin'"

Jim stolidly snapped the boy's ring finger too.

"That's two. I'm disappointed, Derby. I'd heard you were smarter than this."

"What do you want?"

"That's good," Jim said, gently lowering the youth into the chair he had placed ready in the middle of the room when he broke into the apartment to lay his ambush. He cuffed Derby's left hand to the bars of the chair and took his injured right hand in a firm grip. "Now you're listening. That's very good, Derby. I'm pleased. OK, let's start this again - we got off on the wrong foot somehow, and I'm sure we can do better. You're Derby, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Try, 'yes sir.'"

"Yessir."

"No, look at me, and say it nice and clear. No mumbling. One last chance. You're Derby, right?"

"Yes sir."

"Good boy. And you're the leader of the Three Streets gang."

"Yes sir."

"Well, sorry Derby, but that's the wrong answer. You see, this is a corporate takeover. The Three Streets are over. Now they're the north-west division of the Prospectors. You follow? You'll be my lieutenant, so long as you show you can follow orders and deliver results. But your gang is my gang now. You follow?"

Outside the apartment there were eight of the former Cascade Crew, now the south-east division of the Prospectors. The Man said to wait, and not to come in, whatever they heard. And you did what the Man said, if you wanted to stay healthy.

So nobody said anything when, from inside the apartment, they heard that noise like twigs snapping and then some more of that screaming...

 

His father had been right after all. Who would have thought it? The old man had always said that it was all about money. What was the saying? Who dies with the most toys, wins. Well, he had certainly had plenty of toys when he had driven into that tree with Stephen next to him. But he, Jim, now had more. Applying a little corporate know-how to the gang mind-set, using military techniques to select targets and organise labour, and the Prospectors were functioning nicely. The protection offered to small shopkeepers was easy money - anyone likely to give them trouble already worked for the Man, or was invited to join as soon as he became aware of their existence. He had, in fact, reduced the protection tariff twice since the business started and now that he had set up the limited company to receive payment by cheque or credit card they could even claim a tax deduction for the amount they paid him.

The whores were a different business. It had taken a while and cost some money, but pimps really weren't the kind of people you could do business with, long term. Cascade's whores were, now, independent self-employed businesswomen, and their subscriptions to the Prospectors' Benevolent Society were steep but brought them real benefits in terms of protection, medical benefits and - provided they stayed clean - the "Pension Plan". Most of them had assumed the "Pension Plan" was a simple scam to bring the Benevolent Society subscriptions up to the same level of deduction they were used to from their pimps. But when Doris had hit forty, the Prospectors had hired a hall, thrown her a surprise party, and given her a cheque that would send her back to the small town where she grew up with enough money to buy that diner she'd been talking about for the past ten years.

It was good business. After that, recruitment was easy.

The boys... well, The Man was clear about that. You had to be sixteen - and, trust me, he could spot a fake ID better than any cop - and you had to be there because you wanted to be. But if you wanted to be a whore, well, the Man wasn't going to stop you. Provided you paid your dues, that is. And no punter was going to step over the line, not when the Prospectors were around. And they were everywhere.

Drugs too. If you wanted to get clean, they'd get you clean. There were eight whores and five regular people who you could go to for a testimonial. The Man had a padded room set up in a basement, and the Prospectors would make sure you didn't die while you got the shit out of your veins. And then they wouldn't sell you any more. Ever. And all it cost was one percent of your lifetime earnings. Paid weekly. In cash. And they'd break the legs of anyone else who tried to sell you drugs on their patch... a patch that was growing, till it covered nearly half the city.

Yeah, sure, they'd sell you the shit too, if you didn't WANT to get clean. They were a business, after all. Only they charged on an interesting basis. Five per cent of your lifetime earnings. Paid weekly. In cash. Of course.

 

The only thing he couldn't afford was weakness. None of his lieutenants was trying to kill him, that was just paranoia - none of them would dare. But something was going on. The hospital couldn't help. Hell, if he went back there he was liable to wind up in a rubber room. But there had to be something...

He braked, sharply, and in ten seconds was out of the car and into the bus station. He cut the kid out of the herd and, before he had a chance to think about what he was doing, slammed the kid up against the wall by his neck.

"Who the fuck said you could troll for business here?"

"A-a-a-a-"

Oh. The kid was trying to answer, but was slightly hampered by the lack of air going into his throat. Jim gently lowered him to the ground and took a good look. Definitely under age, and that was one thing he wouldn't have, not in his town.

"Sorry, man," the kid said holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"I was just looking for a place to stay, I wasn't..."

The kid went bright red when it suddenly caught up with him what he was being accused of and Jim forced down a smile. Suddenly his skin had stopped itching and the light stopped hurting his eyes. Life was looking up. Now all he had to do was work out what he had stopped the kid for if it wasn't to stop him hooking.

"What's your name, kid? And how old ARE you, anyway?"

"Hey, what business is it of yours, man? I mean, I just got into town and ten seconds later I'm being rousted by some neanderthal. This is SO not good..."

"Name?"

"I just got off the bus! I need to get to the University, OK, and register and sort out where I'm rooming..."

"You got a name?"

"Get your hands off me, man! I mean it. HELP ME!!! GET THIS PSYCHO OFF OF ME!!!! SOMEBODY CALL THE COP--"

Jim found he had his hand over the kid's mouth, and with the other he lifted him off his feet, swung him around, and dumped him in the trunk of his car. Some sane part of him wondered dimly what the hell he was doing, kidnapping this kid in broad daylight at the central bus station, but the rest of him calmly slammed the trunk shut and then, struck by a thought, went over and picked up the kid's backpack. Popped the trunk, dropped the backpack into the kid's astonished arms, and then slammed it shut again.

He hummed quietly to himself all the way back to Prospect. He'd just take the kid inside, find out his name, maybe feed him while he found out his story, and then see him safely on his way. There were sharks around, still, and this was very fresh meat. Fortunately, he'd landed in the lap of the biggest shark around. If sharks *have* laps.

Ellison, he thought to himself, sometimes you think too much.

He wondered, vaguely, how long he could keep the kid before anyone would miss him. And then wondered why he would want to.

He stopped at the grocery and picked up some steaks. Junkho was there and she smiled at him timidly as he picked out two steaks instead of his usual one. Some impulse made him get broccoli and mange tout. Kids ought to eat green stuff, right? He picked up salad stuff and fruit. A bottle of wine. Why did he suddenly feel like celebrating?

He took his groceries in a brown paper bag and then realised he had another use for the grocery sack. He tipped the food out over the front seat of the car - one of the boys would bring it upstairs for him later. He looked around the street. No-one in sight except Enrique who was on watch on the roof. He used a hand sign to check and received Enrique's high sign telling him all was clear.

He popped the trunk again a scant couple of inches and yanked the backpack out and hoisted it over his shoulder. Then he stuck his head into the trunk without lifting the lid, so he was up close and in the kid's face but the kid couldn't see out, and growled "Don't make a sound!" Then the paper bag went over the kid's head, the kid went over Jim's other shoulder, and they went up into the apartment.

The kid was hyperventilating now. Jim put him down on the sofa and let him go. It took him a minute to work out he was stationery and the right way up, and that breathing might be easier if he took off the bag. Then he blinked in the afternoon sunlight and looked up at Jim through watery blue eyes.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Jim said calmly as he went over to the door to take in the groceries. He threw the steaks onto the stove.

"You hungry?"

"Listen, man, I'm grateful and all, and I don't want to cause any trouble, but I really need to go to the university, like I said. They'll be looking for me, right? I'm the youngest undergrad in this year's intake and they made my mom sign all kinds of forms before they'd take me in. They'll notice if I'm late, really..."

Jim carried on preparing dinner. The kid's voice had a soothing quality, somehow. And the food smelled and tasted great, nothing like the way his tastebuds had been playing him up lately.

He wondered if it would last. He'd have to square the university. That shouldn't be hard. If the parents had sent him to college on his own, well, who's to say where he had disappeared along the way. Maybe the spare room under the stairs... some bars on the windows would do it, a new door. For tonight... there was a length of chain in the back of the truck and he was sure he had a padlock or two around somewhere. Lock one end round his leg to make an ankle cuff and then padlock the other end around the kitchen pillar...

A sudden thought struck him. He rooted through the kid's backpack till he found a wallet. The kid had a name after all. Blair Sandburg. Fifteen years old. Next of kin listed as Naomi Sandburg, with an address in... Nepal?

He grinned to himself. It would work out. He could make it work. He was the Man, after all.


End file.
